Sport and the Media

Sport and the Media

The growth of television as a significant cultural form during the

1960s put the relationship between sport and the media on the public

agenda. In late 1969, the US magazine Sports Illustrated drew

attention to the ways in which television was transforming sport. In

effect, sport in the television age was a 'whole new game'. The

growing economic and cultural significance of television for sport

gradually became a pertinent issue in countries around the

world.Clearly sport and television had developed a degree of

interdependence. They belonged together 'like ham and eggs'. In the

view of some, television had 'made' sport

Newsweek expressed concern, in 1967, over the extent to which

television was the powerful partner in the relationship. Debates

developed from the 1970s as to whether the effects of television were

beneficial or harmful both argued that television had transformed

sport. By the 1980s, academic research had mapped out the field and

proposed research agendas and book-length studies had appeared. It is

noteworthy that, to date, far more critical attention has been paid to

television sport than to sport coverage in the print media.

The study of the media has been informed by sociological and

semiological traditions.

I will outline work in these areas and then discuss some key themes

and topics before concluding by outlining current research

trajectories. Typically, media sociology distinguishes three main

aspects of the communicative chain: production, message and reception.

Sociological study of the first part of the communicative chain, the

production of media messages, involves the study ...

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...terest and heightening drama were laid out by de

Lotbiniere (1949) in a highly influential document that became the

bible of commentary during the 1950s. Camera positions and cutting

styles were established by processes of trial and error (see

Wolstenholme, 1958) and only later, in the 1960s, became

conventionalized. Sports journalism as a profession was, In large

measure, a product of the late nineteenth century, as sports magazines

appeared in significant numbers, and newspapers began including

dedicated sports sections. Accounts of the careers of journalists and

commentators reveal much about the attitudes underlying the formations

of these professional practices. The focus on stars, the construction

of dramatic interest and the relative marginalization of expertise,

are all common features of media sport journalism